Detainees

"Americans Held in Foreign Jails Feel for U.S. Detainees" (Dec. 2), comparing Americans held in foreign jails with current U.S. detainees, was very disturbing. Comparing Stephen Roye of Los Angeles, a convicted and admitted heroin smuggler, with the current U.S. detainees is like comparing apples with oranges. Roye says he has lost his Jewish faith and doesn't want to come back to the U.S. If he really had Jewish faith he would not have committed the crime of drug smuggling. Are we supposed to be sad for him?

Francisco Castaneda spent nearly a year locked up in Southern California immigration detention centers while fighting his deportation case. During that time, the Salvadoran national pleaded with the medical staff to treat painful lesions on his penis. He filed grievances about the quality of care and even sought outside help. Department of Homeland Security health officials responded by giving him Ibuprofen and denying his request for a biopsy because it was considered "an elective procedure.

The Feb. 14 editorial "The Gitmo disgrace" is based not on a study done and sanctioned by the United Nations but on one done by an independent group of individuals appointed by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Commission. This group based its findings not on firsthand knowledge but on interviews with recently released detainees and their lawyers. Here's what my investigation has determined. These findings are based on being in Gitmo every day for the last 365 days. They are based on my experience as a state prosecutor who is familiar with the law and the rules of evidence.

The Obama administration took an important step toward closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when it announced plans Friday to prosecute the accused Sept. 11 conspirators in the United States. But the move also underscored the near certainty that President Obama will miss a self-imposed January deadline for shuttering the controversial facility. Five detainees -- including self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, will be tried in federal court in New York.

February 17, 2011 | By David S. Cloud and Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau

If the U.S. captured Osama bin Laden or other senior Al Qaeda leaders, they would probably be imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said in his first public acknowledgment that the controversial U.S. military prison in Cuba might be used to hold future detainees. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman Zawahiri, both of whom are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, would probably be moved quickly to the U.S. air base at Bagram, Afghanistan, for questioning and eventually moved, "probably to Guantanamo," Panetta told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

Re "High Court Rejects Bush's Claim That He Alone Sets Detainee Rules," June 30 Well, now that the president has lost two cases related to his administration's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, do you think he gets the message? I wish I could say yes, but apparently he figures he can get Congress to change laws so he can continue in the same mode. What he hasn't figured out yet is that his policy violates international standards of decency, and he should be embarrassed, as an American, to continue with the policy.

Under gray skies all but obscured by an opaque canopy and high concrete walls topped with razor wire, two bearded young men in tan tunics are having "rec time" inside separate chain-link pens. One jogs frenziedly back and forth in the 30-foot enclosure; the other is curled like a fetus at the base of a cement block. It's a dreary winter afternoon, but the scene could be any time of the day or night. The hour for rec time is one of the few unpredictable features in a day in the life of a detainee.

An internment camp survivor, former American prisoners of war, 175 members of the British Parliament and a group of Hungarian Jews were among those celebrating the Supreme Court's decision on enemy combatants Monday. They were among about 20 individuals and interest groups who had filed amicus curiae briefs in support of detainees held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Your Aug. 6 editorial, "Secrecy vs. the Republic," addressed only part of the violation of rights committed by our Justice Department. We the people do need to know the names of those jailed after the 9/11 attacks. We also need to protest in favor of the constitutional rights that prohibit their detention without due process. This point was driven home to me during a discussion at the Manzanar exhibit at the Japanese-American National Museum last Sunday. One of the survivors of the camp and I bemoaned the fact that the violations of U.S. law based on racial profiling that led to that camp were being used today against Arabs living in our country, many of whom are U.S. citizens.